


The Faery and Her Human

by iisrafel



Category: Secret of Kells (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:04:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iisrafel/pseuds/iisrafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The faerie Aisling is discontented to find a human wandering around in her forest. The only humans Aisling has ever seen normally stay behind the unfinished Wall of Kells (Kells being a resent defacing of the forest, a large wound in the ground of people fleeing from something called a ‘Viking’). There is a priest in Kells; Aisling can feel him from miles away working on the Book – not even the Wall can hold that power in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Faery and Her Human

The faerie Aisling is discontented to find a human wandering around in her forest. The only humans Aisling has ever seen normally stay behind the unfinished Wall of Kells (Kells being a resent defacing of the forest, a large wound in the ground of people fleeing from something called a ‘Viking’). There is a priest in Kells; Aisling can feel him from miles away working on the Book – not even the Wall can hold that power in.

The trees tell her there is no book, but she has seen it. It turns the darkness to light.

The human is not a man, but he’s not a boy either. He’s dressed in these brown ruddy clothes. Either he doesn’t care about what he’s wearing or he shouldn’t, one or the other, but that’s not what Aisling cares about.

The boy, crouching in front of one of her favorite boulders, is plucking berries from a bush. (They’re the green ones, the ones that don’t smell very good.) He’s putting the stolen berries in a bag and looking around like he’s going to get in trouble.

She wonders if he knows the berries are poisonous, so she tells him. He’s so startled that the carefully collected berries, even the ones in the bag, go flying in every direction. She laughs at him and calls her wolves to circle the clearing they’re in. Maybe she can scare him some more.

She asks him what he’s doing in her forest.

He says she isn’t real. And things don’t belong to things that don’t exist anyway. And he’s not going to EAT the berries. He’s going to use them for ink.

He is arrogant and Aisling doesn’t like that, so she asks him again: “What are you doing in my forest? Are you going to ravish it? Destroy it? Take back those berries to your family for food?”

(And, yes, she heard him, but she wants to make sure.)

He’s really scared now, almost trembling, even if he’s acting like he’s not. “No! I can’t take food back to my family if I don’t have any family to feed!”

“No family?” she asks, because that is a concept that she knows very well. He nods. “No father?” Again, he nods. “No mother?”

“No one.”

“I am alone, too.”

But he smiles at her and tells her that she’s not alone, not really. She has friends and… trees… and other things to keep her company.

Aisling decides that she ought to be nice to the human. She lets him take the berries and she doesn’t let her wolves bite him. And when he’s safe behind the unfinished wall, she leaves him berries every full moon (because he’s bound to run out of ink, right).

When he visits the forest he draws for her, and, in turn, she tells him about her forest, about the light and the shadows, about Crum Cruic and the Illuminator that stole his eye.

(“He has one left you know. The eye sees everything.”)

He tells her about the Book, that he’s working on it and that it’s almost finished. He says that the words glow off the page; that all the shadows go away when he opens it. He says that he isn’t afraid of Crum Cruic.

(He isn’t, either, and he steals the monster’s other eye to prove it.)

So, when the Vikings come Aisling tells him to run. (“They’ll destroy everything! They’ll kill your friends! They kill everything. You’ll die.”)

He doesn’t, the brave fool. He stands and fights and Aisling goes hoarse screaming.

The Vikings, in a small moment of mercy, after ripping out his eye, decide to give him his last words. They don’t know he has the Book. They don’t know its power.

He opens it and light explodes out and the Vikings, being full of darkness and shadow, are blown away by its glory.

Even Aisling has trouble standing in its light.

But now, Kells is safe. The Vikings are gone.

(It’s a good thing he has a spare eye.)

**Author's Note:**

> The Secret of Kells is my all time fave movie ever and I wanted to pay homage to it, so when we had to convert a film into a short story for my AP class...


End file.
